Steve Jones is the editor of SQLServerCentral.com and visits a wide variety of data related topics in his daily editorial. Steve has spent years working as a DBA and general purpose Windows administrator, primarily working with SQL Server since it was ported from Sybase in 1990. You can follow Steve on Twitter at twitter.com/way0utwest

I’ve been a judge in this contest for the last 3 years, and each years we’ve had really good finalists, but typically a couple that stand out above the others. As we’ve gone through the judges’ voting, we usually agree on 3 or 4 of the finalists and then debate the last 1 or 2. This year we had a lot more interest, and a lot more deserving candidates. We didn’t have a lot of people in the middle of the pack, the whole pack moved up! We finally couldn’t get below 6, so we have six finalists instead of 5 this year, and they are:

You can view their entries and place your vote at the Exceptional DBA site.The winner will get a trip to the PASS Summit and get their award at the SQLServerCentral party on Monday, Nov 8. You can see them at the party if you use the “SSC2010” code when you register for PASS.Hope to see you there and good luck to all the candidates.